Trash by Andy Mulligan Read Free Book Online

hands.
    ‘They’re taking part in a quiz,’ said Jun. ‘It’s a newspaper thing, sir. They have to research, sir. They said they don’t come to school here so why would you help them, so I said I’d come. They can give money for the computer time, OK? I said maybe you would, po.’
    I told them to come in, and they came over to my desk. Shorts and T-shirts, bare feet black right up to their knees – their smell filled the room. The one called Raphael looked at me, pushing his hair back, too shy to make eye contact. He held a twenty-peso note in both his hands, for computer time. Gardo stayed behind him, and I could feel him staring right at me, as if he might have to fight.
    ‘I’m afraid the connection’s slow today,’ I said.
    I put a second chair by the computer, and waved away the boy’s money. They slid onto the chairs, and Raphael got straight down to work. Children always know how to use computers – it never fails to amaze me. Children who’d never stepped inside a classroom could work a keyboard faster than me. It was the games shops where they learned, of course. For ten pesos you could get fifteen minutes of shooting and chasing.
    I saw him go straight to a search engine, and the bald boy opened a piece of paper. Raphael tapped in a name, and we all watched as the computer thought long and hard.
    I said: ‘What have you eaten today, Jun?’
    He smiled up at me and held my arm. ‘Nothing!’ he said proudly.
    I went down to the kitchen and made some sandwiches. I got three glasses too, and filled them with lemonade. By the time I got back, the boys were chattering in low, excited voices, scrolling down the screen and pointing. They’d called up a local news site, and were reading carefully.
    ‘What’s the question?’ I said. They looked blank, so I said, ‘For your quiz? What question are you answering?’
    Raphael said, ‘It’s about history, sir.’ Then he was talking in his own language, which I am ashamed to say I hardly speak, despite the length of time I’ve been out here. The second boy, Gardo, was shaking his head. Whatever they were looking at seemed to be a serious business.
    Jun, meanwhile, took a sandwich in a hand that was so dirty it made me wince. The boy bites his nails right down to the quick, and his fingers remind me of skeletons. He promises and promises to come to class, but he so rarely does – he must have the strangest mix of ideas from the ones he’s attended! It’s become a joke between us. I always say, ‘So – you’ll be in school tomorrow?’ He assures me that he will, and I know he won’t. I will never forget the sight of him the first time he took a shower here. He had a towel wrapped round himself, and was dancing with the cold and the excitement of the spurting water – and maybe the amazement of seeing his own flesh lookingclean. I gave him one of our school uniforms, but I never saw him wear it.
    Sister Olivia fell in love with him too, and asked me about adoption. A twenty-two-year-old girl from England, wanting to adopt! I told her not to think of it. The machinery for adoption out here is slow, for one thing. In six years I’ve known one successful case for a foreigner. No government is going to give away its children, I understand that – and yet you look around at the thousands who cannot be taken care of and it breaks your heart. You look at the mountains of garbage, and the children on them, like so much more garbage, and it’s easy to think what you do in a school like this is of absolutely no consequence or good to anyone. More and more children. When I walk around the shanties, I see the babies, and I am always asked to hold them. And while we’re smiling and laughing, I am thinking, in the back of my mind:
This tiny child – as soon as it can crawl, it will be crawling through trash
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    The boys finished on the computer soon after I came back with the tray, and they turned and had a sandwich, and drank their lemonade. They were